It is common today for cooks in homes, bakeries and restaurants to use hypodermic type needles to inject marinades, flavorings and other liquid substances into meats and other food products. Such devices are also commonly used to inject more viscous liquids and semi liquids such as jellies, frostings, puddings, into such foods as cakes, cream puffs, eclairs and cupcakes. Typically these devices resemble oversized medical hypodermic syringes which the cook fills through the back of the barrel and hand operates by pushing a plunger. These devices allow flavorings to penetrate inside and throughout the food and provide foods with a moistness, texture, and/or taste they might otherwise lack.
Commercial food injection devices have also been in common use for many years. Like their home and restaurant counterparts, these devices typically use hollow needles inserted into the food to inject liquids and semi liquid substances. Their applications include not only injecting flavorings and food substances such as already mentioned, but also liquid and semi liquid substances to increase food weight, decrease spoilage, and help in processing. Three such commercial food injection devices are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,455,928, Townsend—Means for Injecting Fluids Into Food Products; U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,095, Van Haren—Brine Injection Device; U.S. Pat. No. 5,881,640, Raevsager—Apparatus for Injecting Brine Into Food Products.
All the aforementioned devices are limited to injecting liquids and semi liquids. Solid materials such as dried spices, salt, sugar, sunflower seeds, peanuts, garlic cloves, chunks of pineapple, jellybeans, chunky peanut butter, etc. cannot be injected using any of these devices.
It would be useful to have a mechanism which could inject solid substances such as just mentioned into foods. Such a device also might find wider use in medical and other settings.
As examples, whole peanuts could be injected into sesame rolls, or pineapple chunks injected into hams, or garlic cloves injected into a pot roast, or jellybeans injected into frosted cupcakes, or lemon chunks injected into rotisserie cooked chicken, or walnuts injected into roast beef, or ice cream injected into angel food cake, etc.